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The State of Show Biz. Visions of a vast new market of 166 million people account for most of the enthusiasm. But equally important is a growing and unforced sense of common identity. Citizens of the Six are now able to visit one another's countries without passports, and in the process, wartime resentments are disappearing; many a French family now spends its summer vacation in Germany.
The cultural unity of Europe, once an intellectual ideal, is also becoming a reality to ordinary people. Techy there is scarcely a university in Germany that does not regularly exchange professors with sister universities in France and Italy. More than 200 French and German towns have entered into "sisterly" alliances; early last month the mayor and municipal council of Bergisch-Gladbach in the Rhineland climbed into half a dozen buses, along with the local band and singing society, and headed off to France to help their sister town of Bourgoin celebrate World War II Armistice Day with speeches, music and wine.
From Scotland to Rome. Europeans are all exposed to the blandishments of a twelve-nation TV link called Eurovision (TIME, May 12, 1958). And to capture all possible audiences, French. German and Italian moviemakers increasingly tend to get together in co-productions. The result is that Germany's Curt Jiirgens is big box office in France, and French Comic Fernandel is a favorite in Italy. Two months ago. when Germany's schoolgirlish Actress Romy Schneider announced her engagement to France's Alain Delon, fans in both countries glowed. Inevitably, such cultural and economic intermeshing has its impact on European politics. The coal and steel partnership has helped to destroy the old German lust for Alsace, has helped to resign France to returning the Saar to Germany.
The Outsider. Looking on at all this, a little forlornly, is Britain, which feels left out. After rejecting membership in the Common Market because of the superior attraction of its American and Commonwealth connections, Britain now discovers that against a Paris-Bonn axis, it has no way to apply its ancient and instinctive balancing act between combinations of European powers.
Britain's first countermove—an attempt to link all Western Europe in a Free Trade Area with far looser ties than the Common Market—was defeated by adamant French opposition. This week in Stockholm, British negotiators will meet with representatives of Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria and Portugal (the "Other Seven") in the hope that a "Little Free Trade Area" of their own would force the Common Market Six to come to terms with them. But even some Britons fear that, instead, such a maneuver would only divide Western Europe permanently into two hostile economic camps.
London's influential Economist recently concluded that British membership in the Common Market would not necessarily involve the great risks that Britain had previously feared—too strong a commitment to European political union, too much of a strain on Commonwealth ties. So far, the Macmillan government shows no sign of coming around to this view—and the Common Market nations themselves, so caught up in all the intricacies of their new opportunities, have no desire to renegotiate everything to bring the British in.